Various image pickup apparatuses have been hitherto proposed and developed. Moreover, an image pickup apparatus performing predetermined image processing on an image pickup signal obtained by image pickup to output the image pickup signal has been proposed. For example, Patent Document 1 and Non-patent Document 1 propose an image pickup apparatus using a technique called light field photography. The image pickup apparatus includes an image pickup lens, a microlens array, a light-sensing device and an image processing section, and an image pickup signal obtained from the light-sensing device includes the intensity of light on a light-sensing plane of the light-sensing device as well as information on the traveling direction of the light. Then, the image processing section reconstructs an image viewed from an arbitrary viewpoint or an arbitrary direction on the basis of such an image pickup signal.
[Patent Document 1] International Patent Publication Ser. No. 06/039,486 pamphlet
[Non-patent Document 1] Ren.Ng, et al, “Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera”, Stanford Tech Report CTSR2005-02